"Consensual sex is not rape if the promise of marriage is broken": High Court

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• Jul 8, 2023 | Dhupali Das

The Orissa High Court ruled that if a consensual physical relationship was built on a promise of marriage that failed to...

Digital Desk: The Orissa High Court ruled that if a consensual physical relationship was built on a promise of marriage that failed to materialize for multiple reasons, it could not be considered rape.

The high court dismissed a rape charge made against a man from Bhubaneswar. The allegation was made against him by a woman who is a friend of the petitioner and has been in a matrimonial struggle with her husband for five years.

Other claims against the petitioner, such as cheating, are still under investigation, Justice R K Pattanaik's said in the order.

"There is a subtle difference between a breach of promise made in good faith but later unable to be fulfilled and a false promise to marry," he stated. 

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"In the former case, for any such sexual intimacy, an offence under Section 376 IPC is not made out, whereas, in the latter, it is, since the same is based on the premise that the promise of marriage was false or fake from the very beginning," the high court order of July 3 read.

The Supreme Court stated in an order that if two people continued a physical relationship on the promise of marriage to the victim, which did not materialize later for various reasons, it cannot be labeled rape with the argument that the promise was broken.

"A sour relationship, if initially and genuinely started and developed with friendship, should not always be branded as a product of mistrust, and the male partner should never be accused of rape," it added in the link to the case.